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Is there a way to quit the demoplayback with a key command that's bound to something like /quit?
So I could type a key and quit the demo or close the program?
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If you are in full screen mode, the way to quit out of a demo is to control-alt-delete and use task manager to kill it. At least that's how I do it. (Mostly I stick to windowed mode when viewing demos. Then you just close the window and it's gone.)
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??? In testing the demo feature for the first time I just pressed the escape key to stop playing the demo. Maybe that's something new.
Also, I played the demo by adding all the -demoplay stuff to a copy of the regular CoH launch icon, which runs the updater first. It worked, after clicking through the license screen. Then I tried doing it with cityofheroes.exe instead, and that also works, of course bypassing the license screen.
I intend to use -demodump to save a sequence of still .TGA files, then load it into Premiere, which knows how to treat the sequence as a single animated video clip. Yeah I've got plenty of hard drive space. I'll probably mount my big drive to the client_demos folder. If for some reason the game pukes on that, I'll move the whole game to the big drive. But I ain't using fraps. Not good enough. Demodump is exactly the kind of uncompromised capture quality I want. Thanks Cryptic for including it.
Now here's where it gets interesting. You don't have to play the demo at the same resolution you used when you recorded the demo. You can use -screen to choose any resolution you want to use when you play (or dump) the demo. If it isn't supported by windows as a fullscreen resolution, then you can use -fullscreen 0 to play the demo in a window instead. Furthermore, you don't have to use the traditional 4:3 ratio. Can you say widescreen?
Oh man, the possibilities. This is going to be fun.
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??? In testing the demo feature for the first time I just pressed the escape key to stop playing the demo. Maybe that's something new.
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It IS new, and it's terribly handy! Thanks T_H_X!
Yep, you can demodump at all sorts of resolutions. I sometimes dump at 2048x1536 when I want a good picture of a character. Or you can start a demodump in windowed mode at low rez then, when you get to a good part, maximize it and make bigger shots for that part.
Also, since you aren't playing and worried about frame rates, you can crank your video card's Anti-Aliasing and whatnot up. I'm not sure what game options a demo uses (it always seems to have chat bubbles on, for instance), but you can probably crank up the game details as well via the registry or just by setting them right before you quit a game session.
-demofps is also very handy. It lets you speed up and slow down how fast the demo will play. Lower numbers make it go faster. I mostly use this when doing demodump but it can also be used to speed through a demo to see what happens inside.
You can also change the time of day real easy. It's the third line in the demo and I believe it's just the hour of the day as military time. Set it to about 19 for a sunset, for instance. (Obviously time won't mean dink inside indoor missions.)
If any devs out there are looking for suggestions, it would sure be nice to be able to change perspective. Let us hit a key and have the demoreplay ignore camera instructions. Then let us move around freely. (We'll likely need a slow and precise movement speed as well as a maxxed speed to keep up with the speed demons.) Extra credit if we can re-attach the camera to any character we find!
Having the option to turn off chat bubbles would be nice, too. I can do it myself by going in with notepad but that's a bit of a pain.
P.S. The Zloth account was from beta so I had to make a new one.
I've created another FAQ file describing the demo file format which gives some editing tips to those who would like to fiddle with their demos.
I dont have Premiere. Is there any freeware software that will allow me to string demodump TGA into an animated gif or mpg of somekind?
Or is it more effective just ot use moviemaker and record the demo while its playing. Thanks.
Great guide, thanks.
Wow, I'm tagging this because this is just simply amazing. This is going to help make some seriously cool animations. Now if they only allowed for things like "Show UI" mode with -NoConversations so you can't see what people type, you do get chat bubbles but everything else is safe.
This is great, Oh my god, this is the coolest thing I've seen added to a MMOG in forever.
Hexadecimal
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I dont have Premiere. Is there any freeware software that will allow me to string demodump TGA into an animated gif or mpg of somekind?
Or is it more effective just ot use moviemaker and record the demo while its playing. Thanks.
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Funny you should ask, because I just found out how to make WMV files using the game's own demodump, Irfanview, and Window's Movie Maker 2. All free!!
Just do the -demodump at 640x480 rez and a fixed 8 frames per second. This will create a boatload of .TGA screenshots. Now fire up Irfanview and select the batch processing under the File menu to convert all those TGA files to BMP format. (They come out about the same size.)
Now bring up Movie Maker 2. Look under the Tools/Options... menu and select the advanced tab. Turn the picture duration down to 0.125 and click OK. Click the Import Pictures link on the left side, go to where your BMP files are, highlight one, and press control-A to select all the files in the directory and open them. Now just drag all those pictures down to the bottom area and click "Save to my computer" in the left area. Crank crank crank crank.... POOF! Semi-instant movie!
I haven't seen a way to get MM2 to go higher than 640x480 or show pictures for less than 1/8th of a second but, for outright free, I think this does pretty good!
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This is great, Oh my god, this is the coolest thing I've seen added to a MMOG in forever.
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Air Warrior did it back in the late 80's! In fact, they had some things better. We could detach the camera there and fly it around in the demo so we could easily see the action from a different perspective. Very nice!
As to the chat bubbles - you can edit them out easy enough. Just send the demo to notepad, find the chat text you don't like, and change to an empty string. See the demo edit faq (linked to above) for more info on that.
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I dont have Premiere. Is there any freeware software that will allow me to string demodump TGA into an animated gif or mpg of somekind?
Or is it more effective just ot use moviemaker and record the demo while its playing. Thanks.
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Funny you should ask, because I just found out how to make WMV files using the game's own demodump, Irfanview, and Window's Movie Maker 2. All free!!
Just do the -demodump at 640x480 rez and a fixed 8 frames per second. This will create a boatload of .TGA screenshots. Now fire up Irfanview and select the batch processing under the File menu to convert all those TGA files to BMP format. (They come out about the same size.)
Now bring up Movie Maker 2. Look under the Tools/Options... menu and select the advanced tab. Turn the picture duration down to 0.125 and click OK. Click the Import Pictures link on the left side, go to where your BMP files are, highlight one, and press control-A to select all the files in the directory and open them. Now just drag all those pictures down to the bottom area and click "Save to my computer" in the left area. Crank crank crank crank.... POOF! Semi-instant movie!
I haven't seen a way to get MM2 to go higher than 640x480 or show pictures for less than 1/8th of a second but, for outright free, I think this does pretty good!
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Grab VirtualDub, it's free and can render the raw .tga's to AVI. It's a very useful program.
Open VirtuaDub and select File > Open Video File
Navigate to the directory with your .tga's. Make sure that in the bottom left corner of the file select dialogue "Automatically load linked segments" is checked and then select the first .tga in the sequence and open.
press F7 and chose where to save the finished AVI and you are done.
Wow, that does work well! No 640x480 limit! Thanks Gladius!
(Though there were a couple more steps. You really have to go in under Video->Frame Rate to set the source frame rate to match whatever you used to record. Probably smart to select a compression format, too. I went at 12fps at 800x600 with no compression and was using just under one gigabyte per minute!)
I've got lot's of drive space and never worry about compression until I'm ready for a final product to distribute. I tend not to think about it when working with raw files during editing.
The missing steps were an oversight on my part resulting from my editing habits..
I've got a small demo of me and two of my SG mates fighting Dr. Vahzilok, if anyone has some webspace and wants to host it I can send it to you.
Overall, it was a pretty easy fight mainly due to the awesome debuffs from our rad defender. I remember facing Dr. Vahz a while ago with a different character and it was so darn hard to beat him. We were constantly getting our butts handed to us. This time it was the reverse, I took most of the hits and only at the end of the fight was my health in the red. I was able to finish him off with a snipe right as he shot at me so I didn't take the dmg from the last hit.
Send me a PM if you'd like to watch it or can host it for me. The file is about 1.3mb uncompressed and shouldn't be much of a hassle for anyone with broadband.
Laters,
Murphy
If you want to get rid of the chats and the floating damager numbers, go to the link in my sig and download my demo editor / launcher app.
The (free) software I'm using to get video from my demos is gamecam.
http://www.planetgamecam.com/
Hey Storm, what hotkey settings are you using for GameCam? The defaults really conflict with some pretty standard CoH keys.
I can't even get the in-game remote to come up. Any advice would be appreciated. The site isn't very helpful.
I found the info from the GameCam forums. It varies slightly from their own "Getting Started" info as follows:
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What you need to do...
1. Go into your CoH Profile in Game Cam, delete it.
2. Go into your CoH folder in my computer... find the file "CityOfHeroes.exe" drag and drop it into the Profile Manager.
3. Keep Game Cam running in your system tray.
4. Launch City of Heroes like normal..
I've been using Game Cam for weeks with CoH works great! Have fun.
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I'll try it over the weekend.
Interesting stuff. I'll have to give this a try.
Is there a way to take a screenshot of the front of your character in game other than having someone else do it for you?
uh, just rotate the camera, mid-mouse button.
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uh, just rotate the camera, mid-mouse button.
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Somebody over in MMORPG.net was having problems with that - the wheel-as-mouse-button thing wasn't working at all for him. The Page Up key should work like the middle mouse if your mouse wheel/button isn't working right for you.
Actually, I figured it out.
The answer is, I am sofa king we todded.
Thanks for the help.
Awesome! New toys to waste my time with 
Thanks Zloth! I used VirtualDub to turn my demo into an AVI. It was a huge file but it was my first try. Hey Gladius, is there any way to crop the images in VirtualDub? Through my whole demo 90% of the screen was unwanted. If VirtualDub can't do this do any of the other free ones? Thanks again!
Great program Zloth...thanks!!
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Yeah I also have Fraps. Haven't used it in CoH, but have used it in other mulitplayer games. Ususally FPS, which is very cool to watch yourself kickin some *** in game. Fraps files can get very large though, but if you have a good program to compress them, they can look very cool for a website playback. Or to share with your buddies.
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Here's a thought for the Fraps people. Do a /Demowhatever to make a demo inside the game, then load the demo using the instructions above and record your recording!
Without having all the processor overhead that actually PLAYING the game can cause, your Fraps videos (which are just recording other videos) should be able to be recorded at high speed and good quality!
I have Fraps and will give this a shot myself.
Or better yet, dink around with your demo first and then FRAP it.
Whether Fullscreen or Windowed, ALT+F4 will close it immediately and properly. CTRL+ALT+DEL causes windows to end the thread which can have adverse effects on the file.
Thanks, Sloth! This is a big help